Hamlet, the State of Emotion and the International Crisis of Meaning

Published date01 March 2008
Date01 March 2008
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/13619322200800004
Pages14-26
AuthorVanessa Pupavac
Subject MatterHealth & social care
Vanessa Pupavac
School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
Hamlet, the State of Emotion and
the International Crisis of Meaning
Abstract
Drawing on Shakespeare, and in particular Hamlet’s psychological crisis, this paper examines the relationship
between emotions and meaning, a key theme in artistic work since Aristotle but, it is argued, largely ignored in
psychology and the social sciences. Now, however, against a background of international terrorism, lessons are
being learned from literature’s insights.
Key words
Meaning, emotions, Shakespeare, terrorism, psychological crisis
poetry in his historical account of the individual.
Modern Western understanding of the self and
human emotions is heavily indebted to literature’s
insights. Literary genres themselves reflect changing
human subjectivity.The novel’s rise in the eighteenth
century was propelled by novel emotional sensibilities
(Watt,1987).Importantly women such as the novelists
Charlotte Brontë or George Elliot, effectively excluded
from most professions until the twentieth century,
explored individual psychology through their fictional
writing. Consider Brontë’s powerful account of the
child Jane Eyre’s breakdown. Literature was elaborating
psychological problems long before modern psychiatry
was founded. Great nineteenth century thinkers from
Freud to Marx were avid readers of literature for
insights into the human condition. Most familiarly,
Freud developed his core psychoanalytical concepts
such as the Oedipus complex from literature.
Shakespeare’s contribution to the modern
understanding of the self was profound. From the
Romantic philosophers to contemporary philosophers
like Harold Bloom and Agnes Heller, Shakespeare’s
writing continues to be mined for insights into
human psychology. Above all, Shakespeare’s Hamlet
is considered close to us and to speak to our
contemporary problems.
Hamlet’s crisis of irreconcilable
meanings
Why does Shakespeare’s Hamlet seem so close to us?
Why does Hamlet speak to our psychological
problems? Shakespeare’s drama takes us to the
Interest is reviving in meaning and emotion across
the humanities and social sciences. It has long been
recognised that psychological wellbeing is influenced
by people’s sense of purpose (Frankl,1992). A growing
number of studies explore how common psychological
disorders may represent acute forms of cultural
insecurities (Bracken, 2002; Frosh,1991). More
recently the links between global security strategies and
ontological security are gaining attention. The problem
of meaning is becoming prominent in research into
the War on Terror, as I will explore below.
The idea of emotions having meaning takes us all
the way back to Aristotle’s writing on the emotions.
For Aristotle, emotions are sensations with thought
and are involved in what matters to us. Emotions
arise from what is meaningful to us, but also influence
what is meaningful. Emotions engage us with the
world and inform what we think and care about.
If professional psychology and the social sciences
have generally neglected the relation between the
emotions and meaning, the theme has remained
fundamental to artistic work. Philosophical and
sociological writings on the emotions have
continually sought insights from literature and art,
from C Wright Mill’s reading of Balzac to Richard
Sennett’s reading of Dostoyevsky to Kenan Malik
and Raymond Tallis’ interest in Renaissance art to
understand human subjectivity historically. The
philosopher Charles Taylor has written specifically
against psychological models, which neglect human
meanings (Taylor, 1985).Taylor’s seminal Sources of
the Self (1991a) draws extensively upon novels and
Mental Health Review Journal Volume 13 Issue 1 March 2008 © Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
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POLICY

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